Khan Putin and the new Russian horde in Mongolia

by Stefano Caprio

The first visit of a Russian leader to the then capital Karakorum took place in 1247, when the whole of Russia and the whole of Asia were subjugated to the Great Khan Baty, Genghis Khan's heir. Putin needs to show himself on international stages, and Ulan-Bator is a much more convenient location than China, where the Russian inevitably appears as a subject. As the troubled affair of the Siberia-2 gas pipeline shows.

Vladimir Putin's trip to Ulan-Bator provoked a lot of reactions, due to his tracotence in ignoring the international court's arrest order, his evident attempt to force China into energy trade agreements, and for various other reasons.

In reality, Putin wanted to show the true meaning of his entire policy of aggression and disruption of the international geopolitical landscape, in the deepest roots of Russian resentment against the entire world: not only for the loss of the Soviet empire, but going all the way back to the greatest humiliation in Russia's millennial history, for the invasion and two-century-old yoke of the Tatar-Mongolian horde.

The first visit of a Russian leader to Mongolia had in fact taken place in 1247, when all of Russia and the whole of Asia were subjugated to the Great Khan Baty, Genghis Khan's heir whom Prince Aleksandr Nevsky - one of the figures most extolled by Putin and Patriarch Kirill - met in the Horde's capital at Karakorum, where he stayed for two years.

Qara Qorum in classical Mongolian is the ‘Black Mountains’, located in the westernmost part of the country, and the city had been founded shortly after the death of the ‘Khan of the Oceans’, who had united the Turanian and Mongolian peoples and conquered the largest empire in all history, by his third son and first successor Ögödei. It remained capital of the Mongol Empire for thirty years until 1264, when Kublai Khan moved the seat to Khanbalig, today's Beijing, and was finally destroyed by the Ming a century later.

The importance of Karakorum at that time was such that even Pope Innocent IV had sent one of his best missionaries from Rome as ambassador, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, one of the first disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi.

He described in the Historia Mangolorum the greatness of the empire and the devastation wrought, especially the total destruction of Kiev, the capital of Rus', which disappeared from history for almost four hundred years.

In Baty's reign he also met Prince Aleksandr, who in his agreement with the Mongols laid the foundations for the rise of Moscow, which flourished under them thanks to the commercial advantages, which also extended to the Orthodox Church.

Now Putin can land triumphantly at the airport of the capital of Mongolia, and show himself as the real Khan of the new ‘world order’, that of the invading Russian Horde, alongside President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh in the Yurt, the tent decorated like the palace of Karakorum inside the presidential palace of Ulan-Bator.

The new Russian tsar is the true ruler, and the leader of small and peaceful modern Mongolia appears as his devoted subject: it is the great revenge of all Russian history.

Putin wanted to celebrate the anniversary of another symbolic victory, that 85 years ago of the united Soviet and Mongolian troops against the Japanese army during the conflict on the Khalkhin-gol river, before the start of the Second World War.

It is one of the constants in the rewriting of Russian history that recurs most in the mind of the Kremlin Khan, the connection of 20th century victories with older wars, from Aleksandr Nevsky to Stalin, from Kievan Rus' to the Soviet Union.

Of course, the slap on the face of international conventions also counted a lot, showing the insubstantiality of the Hague Tribunal's arrest order to which Mongolia was bound, and which had previously kept Putin from travelling to Armenia and South Africa, two far less secure allies than the Mongols.

On top of all this, Putin chose a particularly delicate moment for the trip to Ulan-Bator, precisely during the particularly heated clash with Ukraine between the Ukrainian Kursk counter-offensive and the Russian counter-offensive in the Donbass, with countless casualties on both sides, including among the civilian population.

Moreover, in the very days of the trip to the East, which continued from Mongolia to the Russian Pacific capital of Vladivostok for the Eastern Economic Forum, there were days of mourning in North Ossetia in the Caucasus, for the 20th anniversary of the massacre by terrorists (and Russian special forces) at the Beslan school.

Putin had gone there a few days earlier, confronting the angry mothers of the 186 massacred children, who still demand justice, having to retreat with their tails between their legs.

In all motivations, the trip was intended to emphasise the ‘normality’ of the situation from the Kremlin's point of view, as if the conquest of the thousand square kilometres of the Kursk region had not affected the plans for war and victory.

Putin's refrain since the start of the war has been that ‘everything is going according to plan’, when it is obvious that everything is working backwards, and instead of winning Berlin back we have to go to the Yurt of Mongolia, even though the recent electoral successes of the neo-Nazi right-wingers in Thuringia and Saxony have aroused great enthusiasm in Moscow, especially the demand to remove Ukrainian flags from German buildings.

Any victory makes broth, from Nevsky's in 1240 against the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights to that of 1938 against Japan, today an ally of the ‘western Nazis’ against whom Russia has unleashed the universal war, although one certainly cannot compare the taking of Bakhmut and Avdeevka with that of Könisberg and Vienna.

All the more so since the Khalkin-gol victory was achieved together with the faithful Mongolian ally, and of true allies today's Russia cannot find many, neither in the West nor in Asia, even among the ex-Soviet countries.

Some commentators believe that Putin's trip was meant to boost approval ratings among the population, which have plummeted far below 70% even in official polls after the Ukrainian initiative in Kursk.

But popular approval in Russia is now a very minor and easily manoeuvrable factor, especially after the rededication to the throne last March, and the only concerns could come from a real economic crisis, for now contained thanks to the proceeds of the war itself.

There is, of course, also a propaganda aspect to the ‘return to Karakorum’, but it is more for abroad than at home, especially thanks to Ulan-Bator's condescension in ignoring the arrest order.

Putin needs to show himself on the international stage anyway, and Mongolia is a much more convenient location than China, where the Russian inevitably appears to be a subject of the eastern great power, and even of the Central Asian states, which are taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to find their own greatness independent of Moscow, beyond the smiles and the agreements of circumstance.

In any case, the visit to Ulan-Bator was precisely to push the Chinese to be more amenable to the ‘Siberia-2 Force’ gas pipeline project, a crucial element of the ‘economic turn towards the East’ that they regard with a certain condescension in Beijing, having many alternatives in the energy sector.

The Mongolians had blocked the plan, which envisages a passage through their territory, and Putin emptied his pockets in talks with Khürelsükh by offering anything to resume the planning of this crucial work for the future of Russia, which sells oil and gas to anyone and at any price, in order to maintain control over an economy gone mad.

Of course, Mongolia has been invited to the Brics Summit, which will be held in Kazan, Tatarstan, from 22 to 24 October and is to celebrate Russia's role in the new ‘multipolar’ world order, the contemporary variant of the Putin-Khan empire.

Brics is the anti-West front making it more a ‘Bricolage’ of countries in search of identity and opportunities to exploit, than a real power in the new world geopolitics. The ‘Force of Siberia’ is transformed on the Mongolian side into an even more resounding title, the Sojuz Vostok, the ‘Union of the East’ a thousand kilometres long to unite Moscow and Beijing, putting the two powers of the new world Horde on an equal footing, at least in the intentions of the Russians.

After Mongolia, Putin intervened in Vladivostok to explain to everyone how important it is to invest in the development of the Russian East to counter the West's claims of domination, which ‘does not allow Ukraine to open negotiations with Russia’ and pointing out as possible mediators precisely the Brics countries, India and Brazil, at most even Turkey, which has also agreed to take part in the Kazan summit.

The only concern Putin expressed at the Vladivostok conference concerned demographics, promising to make multiple births a ‘new fashion’ among the younger Russian generations.

To this end, the school curricula of the new year that has just begun are being reworked, trying to persuade even the underage generation to get involved in this sense right from the school benches, considering pregnancy the true ‘traditional value’ to which they will then somehow aggregate that of the family, whatever it may be.

It is perhaps no coincidence that it is only now that rumours are spreading about Putin's two ‘secret’ children with his ‘unofficial’ wife Alina Kabaeva, aged 6 and 9, Ivan and Vladimir, to set a good example beyond the requirements of security and the more or less ‘traditional’ officialdom of emotional ties. For the time being, the Russians do not seem very convinced of following this model, waiting rather for the end of the ‘Putin yoke’ within a couple of centuries.